Major surgery on the human body causes many effects including severe tissue damage. It has been found that well-nourished normal patients who have undergone surgery should normally produce metabolic responses to the tissue damage. These metabolic responses tend to alleviate the symptoms associated with such tissue damage and in particular enhance the body's ability to promote wound healing and limit tissue damage at the site of surgery.
There are large numbers of people who undergo surgery but have substantially diminished capability to produce the normal metabolic responses to such surgical tissue damage. These individuals are generally those who are protein malnourished and surprisingly constitute a substantial portion of those patients who undergo surgery. Protein malnourished patients are normally considered as those having a serum albumin level of less than about 3.2 gm/dl (100 ml).
With the present invention it is now possible to provide parenteral therapy to such humans (patients), prior to the surgical procedure and for a period thereafter, to first preinitiate and then maintain the normal metabolic response which would ordinarily be set off in well-nourished normal humans (patients) to promote the human patient's ability to overcome tissue damage. The humans who would be beneficially treated by the therapy of this invention would be preselected prior to surgery since most normal humans would not require the therapy of this invention. In this invention a sufficient amount of LEM (leukocyte endogenous mediator, also sometimes known as leukocyte pyrogen, endogenous pyrogen, lymphocyte activating factor or Interleukin I) is parenterally administered to raise the body temperature of a human above normal and usually at least about 1.degree. C. With this invention it is now possible to marshall the human's ability to minimize, by stimulating the human's metabolism, tissue damage, improve wound healing and reduce the susceptibility to infections, e.g., bacterial.
LEM (endogenous pyrogen) is a well known material. It may be classified as a hormone in that it appears to be a substance which is produced in one region of the body and transported to another region where it induces a specific bodily response. The isolation and various experiments with same have been reported in the scientific literature for many years. See:
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